Alerted by a concerned reader worried that “Hatchet II” was being misrepresented, the paper dodged a bullet like it was in “The Matrix.”

Can the cynicism: The Muskegon Chronicle listens to you. And when your local newspaper gets something wrong, it admits the mistake and makes things right.

(The writer -- I think I know him -- probably should have mentioned the non-rating earlier in the story. As he instructed his 2010 winter-term journalism students at Muskegon Community College, get to the point. To which they may now snap back, practice what you preach.).

After the MPAA saddled “Hatchet II” with an NC-17 rating, writer/director Adam Green exercised his prerogative and released “Hatchet II” unrated.

To not do that would have amounted to financial suicide.

Although MPAA ratings technically are just guidelines that alert parents about a film’s content and its suitability for their children, NC-17 is a kiss of death, a de facto ban.

Shower, anyone? Danielle Harris keeps in clean in âHatchet II.â

It means theaters may not admit anyone younger than 17 years old to a movie bearing that rating.

Teenagers are a prime target audience for horror movies, so “Hatchet II” bearing NC-17 would translate to a lot of empty seats.

Green’s decision did not solve all his problems. One national movie chain booked “Hatchet II” unrated, but subsequently pulled the film from its theaters.

Our own Harbor Theater snapped into action, booking the film and its attendant controversy, a movie that just might make folks check out “Hatchet II,” to see what all the fuss is about.

Want to sell something?

Ban it.

No fruit tastes better than forbidden.

You can’t buy publicity like this.

But you can play it for all it’s worth.

Already one Chronicle story has been published about “Hatchet II,” and now a blog.

Manipulation: Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.

A betting man would put money on throngs piling into the Harbor to see “Hatchet II,” if only to get right up in the face of the MPAA.

Issues surrounding the MPAA and its ratings arose four years ago, in 2006 documentary “This Film Is Not Yet Rated.”

When presented to the MPAA, that doc from director Kirby Dick included footage that depicted content that would result in a film getting rated NC-17.

The result: “This Film Is Not Yet Rated” received an NC-17. Dick appealed. Still not satisfied with his movie’s treatment by the MPAA, Dick, as did Green, then released his movie without a rating.

“Hatchet II” and “This Film Is Not Yet Rated” have something else in common: both are independent films, not from the studio system.

In the Oct. 15 story in the Muskegon Chronicle, Green was candid about what he thought not only of what he considers the MPAA’s double standard for indies vs. mainstream: not much.

If “Hatchet II” were a studio film, Green said, “I don’t think there would be a problem.”

Don’t get Green wrong: He loves filmmaking, so much that he’s pretty much booked for the next five years, making a couple family films.

What he doesn’t like is playing a game in which no one’s ever certain about what the rules are.

“The system needs to change,” he said. “All I’m asking is that every movie be held to the same standard, and to having the ratings board have some accountability for the decisions they make, and not just make it this anonymous, arbitrary committee that decides the fate of your film. As much as they’ll say, ‘We’re merely a guidance for people to have an idea what they’re getting into,’ then why does this happen?

“They go with their whims, and the first ‘Hatchet’ was a perfect example of that. There was a movie that had no sex in it, no obscene nudity or anything. There were some girls that were going to be in ‘Girls Gone Wild’ and they were flashing the cameras.”

Which brings to mind another movie, a sexploitation flick called “Piranha 3-D,” which came out earlier this year.

The female nudity and girl-on-girl sex action in “Piranha 3-D,” had the movie been made 25 years ago, would have been considered softcore porn.

A slimeball documentary movie director played by Jerry O’Connell even says he’s making porn.

Back to the original, 2006 “Hatchet,” a film in which there’s “no drug use and, again, there is no violence in it except that was so over-the-top and funny,” Green said, but “we got hit with an NC-17.

“It doesn’t make any sense. There needs to be a clear-cut guideline that everybody can point to and say these are the rules for how these decisions are made.”